


Above the Clouds

by silverr



Category: World of Warcraft
Genre: Blackwind Landing, F/F, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2011-11-08
Updated: 2011-11-08
Packaged: 2017-10-25 20:59:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/274737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silverr/pseuds/silverr
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Severin knew Outland would be different than the peaceful fields of home, that it would be strange and violent, but he didn't expect to find a surrogate father, convivial Horde, or how struggling to reclaim a soul lost to shadows would change his life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Above the Clouds

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Warcraft and World of Warcraft are the intellectual property of Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. and are being used in this fanfiction for fan purposes only. No infringement or disrespect of the copyright holders of Warcraft, World of Warcraft, or their derivative works is intended by this fanfiction.
> 
> Note: I've claimed for years that I'd write this, and I decided that nothing will get me moving on it other than having it stare me in the face every day.

His first days there had been a confusing blur, but at least no one one asked why he was mending wounds instead of repairing a tractor.

.

His sister Anna had laughed at him when she caught him rescuing a nest of newborn mice from the barn cats, but she had gone off and diverted Da, suggesting as she left that he could hide the mice in his shirt and set them free across the river.

"You do know, don't you, that here's cats on both sides of th'river?" she'd said when he'd came slinking back an hour later, wet and muddy. "And owls. And hawks." She was standing on a stool to stir the soup, so she must have been eleven or twelve – or maybe younger, but certainly after mother had died. The memory was smudged: he could remember the fear knotting his stomach at how furious his father would be that he'd snuck off and neglected his chores, but he couldn't remember being punished.

It wasn't until Severin was much older that he understood that the anecdote might have been an invented memory, a child's way of countering helplessness and hopelessness when faced with dead or injured creatures. "At least I saved the baby mice." Or maybe it was rebellion against his father's attitude of _Things die, that's part of life. Nothing you can do about it._ This callousness was probably his father's way of walling off his grief, but as a boy, it just came across as a heartless pronouncement by a cold indifferent bastard.

Whatever the case, however it started, he grew up asking every healer he'd ever come across to train him. Most laughed and shooed him away; the only time anyone ever took him seriously was when he was ten. An elderly druid had gently explained that, without magic, Severin could do little but bind wounds or carry the dying from the battlefield. He hadn't been discouraged by this: in fact, he remembered proclaiming, "Then I'll be the best carrier ever!" He'd diligently saved enough coins to buy a battered book about anatomy that he read and re-read in every spare moment.

His widowed father had never seemed to understood. "Medic? A job where you only find work in places where people are dying and in pain? What's wrong with you? Is being a farmer too boring for you? Helping your own family? is that it?" he'd asked over and over, but it wasn't until he was dying that he finally said, "You couldn't have saved her."

"Da – " Severin squeezed his father's hand. Once so strong, it now seemed frighteningly shrunken and weak, frail bones and papery wrinkled skin.

"There's no more wars, son," the old man whispered. "There's nothing for you to do. You can't be a medic without battlefields. And Anna needs you. Promise me you'll stay, look after her until she marries?"

"I promise."

He didn't tell his father about Outland, a place of foul magic and destruction where good people were still fighting and bleeding and dying, and where there would be plenty for Severin to do.

.

Ten years passed. Ten years of ploughing, planting, fertilizing, irrigating, harvesting, and wintering. Ten years of seeing his friends leave, become soldiers, priests, casualties. Ten years of telling himself that his crops were feeding those fighting the war … but every year he felt less like Severin, and more like one of the dried husks that rattled in the winter fields.

And then, just as he passed his thirtieth year, Anna announced that she planned to wed.

Severin – though he hated himself for thinking it – knew that he was finally free.

.

August flung his arm around Severin's shoulders and said, "So you're leaving us? A filthy bastard you are." Like Severin, as a boy August had tied a book to the plough-handles as he worked - only August's books had been philosophy, not anatomy. He'd come all the way from Dalaran for the wedding.

"You're drunk."

"Not," August poked Severin in the chest, "enough." He turned and waved his tankard at the barmaid. "Oi, wench! Ale!"

"Not drunk enough for what?"

"For what needs to be said." August hiccuped and pushed up his spectacles. "See, I know the real reason you're spurning the love of ... the bosom of yer homeland and all. I know your secret."

"What?"

"You, my friend, want to be a Shining Knight." August waggled a finger. "Slay dragons, rescue damsels, all that boosh. Don't even deny it! If you weren't so hopeless with weapons – splitting logs for firewood doesn't count as axe competence, you know  – I'd've kicked your ass away from this nursemaid rubbish and trundled you off to the Silver Hand."

"Is that right?" Severin folded his arms. "Rubbish, is that what you think of it?"

August nodded so hard his spectacles slid down again. "Of course you're far too old to train as a paladin now, not to mention for Anna's sake you ought to stay with something safer and more suited to a stuffy old uncle." August drained his already empty tankard again. "Oh, don't make that face, Sev, of course I _know_. Short notice for a wedding, and the bride in a puffy dress such as that? It's hoping the old grannies won't notice the belly under the frills."

Severin shook his head. "I never could fool you."

"That's damn right you can't. And since I know you're a pig-headed fool with a block of wood for a brain, I'm guessing you've already signed up to join the forces on the other side of the Portal." August peered in his tankard, as if expecting it to have been magically refilled. "You should let me carve some wisdom in before you go."

"Wisdom, is it? Impart away."

August leaned in, pulling Severin's head toward him until their foreheads bumped. "Don't fight evil too hard, lest you become a champion of entropy."

Severin snorted and pushed his friend away. "What flatulence!"

"I'm serious!" August smashed the palms of his hands together, "Good and evil. We need both."

"Why?"

"Because, without Evil, there's no way to define Good. And if there is neither good nor evil, there's nothing to enflame our striving!"

"So you think I shouldn't go? I should sit around doing nothing?" Severin hadn't told Anna yet –  he'd planned to sell the farm and leave after she was settled in her new house – but he knew this might be his last chance to see his best friend.

"No, of course not, you great oaf." August said. "Just … don't despair if you can't get rid of _all_ the evil, is all. If a little is left, that's not the worst outcome." He swayed, his head wobbling as Severin caught him. "Fook, I'm drunk."

"That, I can agree with." Severin half-lifted, half dragged August's dead weight to a corner of the barn, and put him down on a pile of relatively clean straw and tack rags.

"Sev?"

"Hm?"

"Don't let that new world grind you down. We want the Portal to send you back, not a pile o' dust."

.

.

_~ To be continued ~_

.

.

(02) 11 Nov 2011  
concept 12 September 2008


End file.
